Search Engine Optimisation – No Mystery

Search Engine Optimisation – No Mystery

For many of us, the mere mention of SEO is enough to make our eyes glaze over. However, you might want to pay attention because if it is not done right, the investment in your website might be a little like closing shop on Boxing Day.

Search engine optimisation tries to reach an ideal. And that ideal is when people search on the World Wide Web, your website will rank (or appear) high in the search results. The first page would be perfect, right?

Think of it as a race. When you do a search there is a 40 percent chance you will click the top result. There is an 11 percent chance you will click the second result. Then, it goes rapidly downhill. So, if your website appears on page 147, then simply, you lose.

So, how should your web developer increase the chances of your website appearing on the first page?

At the risk of getting a bit technical, bear with me.

Search engines are programs - like Google, MSN, or Yahoo! - that you use to find websites. They use rather clever programs called web robots that regularly scour millions of websites which they index. That helps to speed up your search results.

So, what is Search engine optimisation or SEO? It is the techniques that web developers use to help robots to index your website in a way that increases the chances of your site ranking highly in a search result.

No matter what anyone tells you, getting ranked highly in a search result is not about 'buying' preferential treatment from obscure search engines - or even the popular ones - and nor is it about secretive technical tricks.

Today, search engines and their robots are pretty sophisticated. While SEO techniques used to be restricted to specific (and highly technical and costly) tasks, now you can easily attract visitors like a magnet by doing some very simple things that may not cost you a cent.

WHY ONLY CONTENT MATTERS

In the bad ol' days, search engines needed to see the words behind the scenes of your website - yes, in the web developers domain. But that is no more.

Today, you can focus on what your reader sees on your web page - the copy - because today's search engines, like you and your customers, look in the same places you do.

That means that the words you use in your website help robots index your website and increase the chances of visitors finding you.

If you have content that aligns with what people are looking for, you are 90 percent there. If you do not have worthwhile content, all the search engine optimisation techniques in the world will not get you very far.

Because producing content is a non-technical activity, you or your writers can take care of it and that's good news.

GETTING KEYWORDS

Search engines don't see the thoughts and ideas. They see 'keywords' and so picking the right keywords to include in your content is critical. You need to find out:

• what keywords are relevant
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• how much demand by customers is there for those keywords
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• how much competition is there for those keywords
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• what keywords should be ignored because they are too general
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We won't mislead you into thinking it's as easy as hand-painting though. For example, if you deliberately use keywords like 'Obscure&random Consulting Services' you could probably claim first position in Google search results. But unless your potential customer already knows about Obscure&random, they will not think to type those keywords. So, how do you work out which keywords are useless and which are winners?

OBVIOUS KEYWORDS

Choosing keywords which are too obvious and that many people use in searches, means it becomes practically impossible for any one website to attain high rankings in search engine results.

Let's suppose that Obscure&random Consulting Services decide to use additional keywords, aside from their business name, like 'consultant', or 'best consultant'.

Since Google indexes about 30 million pages with the word 'consultant' and 12 million for 'best consultant', it is unlikely that Obscure&random will see many visitors. The competition is too big. It would be like running in the crowd at the “Round the Bays” marathon on a hot day. No one will find you.

CLEVER KEYWORDS

Finding clever keywords takes another approach. Ask what your customer is thinking when searching. Let's say that the customers of Obscure&random specialise in selling organic pizzas to hippies.

Obscure&random help them to manage their businesses, locate ingredients, and satisfy their organic pizza-eating clients.

Once they have chosen some keyword phrases like organic anchovies or pizzas for hippies they decide to get real data that will tell them how people really search for information.

There are various websites that help find out what keywords people are actually using. This helps them to identify which keywords can make a real difference by comparing their keywords amongst others and then seeing the results.

Once you have a set of clever keywords, write them into your copy and throughout your website in a way that is informative and consistent ... but beware.

DON'T TRICK THE ROBOT

Search engines have become adept at finding what is useful to visitors and what is trickery. Once you have your clever keywords, do not try to trick the robot. Here's what I mean. Google has a good list of "what not to do" tactics and if your web developer suggests you use them, fire him.

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
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• Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
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• Don't send automated queries to the search engine.
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• Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
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• Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
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• Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
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• Do not trick users by registering misspellings of well-known web sites.
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If you are lucky, tactics like these will be ignored by search engines. But search engines may see them as attempts to manipulate the search results.

They will categorise your pages as spam and may do the equivalent of a technical blacklist on your website. Visitors = zero.

FINAL WORD

So, what have we covered?

• Search engine optimisation is no longer the domain of technical people.
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• Good content is 90 percent of your best SEO technique.
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• The best keywords are not those used by too many websites.
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• The best keywords are selected from the customers perspective.
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• The best keywords are backed up by real data about how well they perform.
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• Avoid tricks and prevent search engines blacklisting your website.
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I hope I didn't say it was going to be easy. It requires some real thought just as any marketing exercise does. However, this should help you decide where you should invest your time and money. So, on that note, happy keyword hunting.

ends

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